At this time we only have stories (no confirmed scientific theories) about our “creation” (assuming that there was a beginning and not a “steady state” background for change) and our “becoming” (to where we “are”).These stories are “based” on some “accepted” “facts” of the cultures who live by these stories.There are no confirmed scientific theories about cosmological creation, although many good partial hypotheses. The Big Bang and the physical Evolution of the Universe hypotheses were not refuted by the “confirming” discovery of the “background radiation”.“SCIENCE” is a social-cognitive process in the (circularly based physicalist theories of biology and brain) that creates space-time causal models and associated narrative stories.

But, as pointed out by David Korten in THE GREAT TURNING, both the religious “creationist” story and the physicalistBig Bang and Expansion story relegate life, mind and spirit to late emergence, without “cause”. One of the universal assumptions among humankind today is that “time is one dimensional”. There are interesting speculation that life, mind, and spirit “were around” at the Big Bang and may have had some influence in cosmic evolution [but they still adhere to 1D time].

I encourage creating physicalist stories, as they do represent “one” possible theme of reality, and have powerful heuristic value.But the story should not be told so as to exclude other stories (the best don’t).Especially when they encourage a passive, go with the flow of evolution, perspective.

Consider a highly speculative story. Fact: most of what we know about the traditional physicalist, Big Bang and Expansion story is less than two hundred years old, most much more recent.Assume that some psi phenomena are real, such that collective minds might influence subtle variables in the matter-energy world.[I believe such phenomena have not been refuted by experimentation.] Our knowledge of the Cosmological Story comes from processed and interpreted data generated from complex physical instrumentation and computers.Imagine both the design and use of these instruments being created so as to create the Cosmological Story in the interpreted data. The origin or zero point of time is always NOW! We continually create both past and future! Our stories are fictional (created) reality![I expect that this may be consistent with some spiritual-religious stories.]

The holarchical (nested hierarchical) story of living systems is a wonder totally independent of the cosmological evolution story.That is, just the story of steady (dynamic) state molecular-biological processes – without evolutionary change – is a challenge to comprehend and appreciate. Within accepted physicalist constraints, the field of creativity is wide open to life (mind and spirit).

SEED:The organization/learning details beyond viable communities and persons (from our evolutionary herstory) towards a global holarchical network of highly diversecommunities, will need to be commensurate in complexity with the intra- and inter- cellular processes of known life. To date, we are orders of magnitude below this. In analogy, we individualized persons are as proteins, except that instead of being a 3D folded form from a linear string of molecular beads, we are a changing web of components with fractal-like depth – with high diversity.This is why viable and sustainable communities and awakened persons is necessary, BUT NOT SUFFICIENT, for long-term survival of Humanity/GAIA.

I conclude with praise for visual artists and other creators who celebrate the Cosmological Story. I eagerly look forward to viewing your creations at the conference. To think/speculate/plan beyond the Here&Now does not exclude augmenting and enjoying the present.

Conference invitee Deena Metzger has founded the nonprofit organization Mandlovu, to “sustain visionary artists, writers, and healers committed to the exploration, revitalization, and support of indigenous wisdom and medicine traditions as paths to beauty, personal and planetary healing, and peacemaking... Mandlovu is devoted to the investigation and transmission of Story as a living form that calls healing and possible futures into being.”

Flickr Photos

Credits

This conference is being organized with support from the Kellogg Foundation and the Co-Intelligence Institute. Illustration credits: Dana Lynne Andersen, in From Lava to Life: the Universe Tells our Earth Story by Jennifer Morgan -- Courtesy of Dawn Publications